Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“That’s the third merchant vessel in a fortnight. Headin’ south past the headland wi’ her hold full and nae so much as a backward glance at Uist.”
Freyr tossed the patrol report onto the table between them like a man discarding a hand of cards he didn’t trust. The parchment slid across the map, catching on the iron weight Ragnar used to pin the northern coastline flat.
“And the fishin’ boats?” Ragnar asked.
“All accounted fer. The Norse traders out of Bergen pulled anchor three days past and havenae returned. Even that stubborn Orkney crew that’s been lingerin’ near the southern strait’s gone.” Freyr dropped into the chair and stretched his legs toward the hearth.
Olaf grunted from his seat near the fire, his gnarled fingers wrapped around a cup of ale that had remained untouched for the better part of an hour. “A month without incident. I cannae recall the last time Uist had a stretch this quiet.”
“Summer before the border dispute wi’ the MacLeods.” Bjorn supplied without looking up from the ledger balanced on his knee. “But even then, we had sheep thieves.”
“So either the world’s gone soft,” Freyr said, “or somethin’s about tae go very wrong.”
Ragnar stood at the window with one shoulder braced against the stone frame, watching the harbor where two fishing boats rocked gently at anchor.
Late morning light danced across the water, and the air carried the mineral tang of low tide and drying nets.
A pair of children chased each other along the pier, their laughter thin and bright against the crash of surf.
The island breathed easier. He could see it in the way the villagers moved through the square without glancing over their shoulders, in the children playing near the water instead of being kept inside, in the guards who leaned against their posts with the loose posture of men who’d begun to believe the danger had passed.
They want tae believe it. I want tae believe it.
“I’m easin’ the watch in public areas,” Ragnar said, turning back to the room.
“Markets, the pier, the lower village. Nay sense in suffocatin’ our own folk wi’ nay reason.
The guard around the keep stays as it is,” he continued, and the brief ease in the room died. “Around Isolda, naethin’ changes.”
No one argued. That particular battle had been fought and lost weeks ago.
“So.” Olaf set his untouched ale on the arm of his chair. “Has Douglas retreated? Or are we just too tired tae see what he’s up tae?”
“Silence is more dangerous than attack, Olaf.” He met the old man’s gaze. “When a man like Douglas goes quiet, it means he’s thinkin’. And when he’s done thinkin’…” He let the words trail into the crackle of the hearth.
“So fer now, we enjoy the peace,” Ragnar said, quieter now, “but we dinnae trust it. Nae fer a second.”
He moved to the table and tapped a point on the map where the southern strait narrowed between Uist and the mainland.
“There’s a coastal trade comin’ in three days.
Shipment from Bergen—timber, iron stock, salt.
‘Tis the last scheduled passage before the autumn currents shift and the route closes fer the season. After that, there shouldnae be any foreign vessels in our waters.”
Before anyone could respond, the solar door swung open and a young lad Ragnar recognized as one of the outer settlement runners stumbled in, flushed and breathing hard.
“Me jarl—” The boy bent double, hands on his knees. “Beggin’ yer pardon, but there’s trouble at Dunmore and Creagach.”
Ragnar exchanged a glance with Freyr. “What kind of trouble?”
“Supply dispute, me jarl. The families that sheltered at Dunmore durin’ the raids—they’re movin’ back tae their crofts, but Dunmore’s elder says they ate through half the winter stores while they were housed there.
He’s demandin’ compensation. And the Creagach folk are sayin’ they worked the fields and mended the walls in return, so the debt’s settled.
” The boy straightened, wiping sweat from his brow.
“Rolf sent me tae ask fer yer judgment before someone starts throwin’ punches. ”
Ragnar rubbed the bridge of his nose. He glanced at the maps, then at Freyr. The coastal defenses needed restructuring before the Bergen trade arrived. If Douglas had scouts watching the shipping lanes, the next three days were critical.
“I cannae leave the defense plannin’. Nae with the trade comin’ in.”
Bjorn cleared his throat. “Lady Isolda handled the grain redistribution well enough. And Rolf’s come around tae respectin’ her since.”
Aye. He has.
“Send fer me wife,” Ragnar said.
Isolda heard the knock while she was mending a tear in Ragnar’s tunic—a task she’d taken up without being asked and would deny enjoying if pressed.
The summons came from Bjorn, brief and businesslike: the outer villages needed mediation, and Ragnar was occupied with defense planning.
By the time she reached Dunmore, the argument had already reached the point where grown men pointed fingers like children fighting over the last oatcake.
Rolf stood between the two men with the weary expression of a man who’d spent hours listening to the same grievances repeated in increasingly creative ways.
“Me lady.” Rolf’s bow was deeper than it had been previously, when he’d barely managed civility. “Thank ye fer comin’.”
“Tell me what’s happened.” Isolda dismounted and Liv fell into step beside her, healer’s satchel slung over one shoulder.
What followed took the better part of two hours. She sat in Rolf’s cramped cottage with both parties and listened as each side laid out every bushel of grain consumed, every fence post mended, every bitter word exchanged since the Creagach families had moved back to their crofts.
The Dunmore elder, a stocky man named Ubbe, had tallied every mouthful with the precision of a moneylender. The Creagach elder, a wiry woman called Maeve whose sharp tongue could have cut steel, had countered with a list of detailed repairs.
Isolda let them talk, let them exhaust themselves against each other the way waves wore down stone.
Then she opened the ledger and laid the numbers bare.
“Dunmore consumed roughly a third more than usual while housin’ the Creagach families. That’s fact.” She looked at Ubbe. “Ye’re nae wrong tae raise it.”
The man’s chest puffed.
“And—” She turned to Maeve. “The Creagach folk repaired Dunmore’s seawall, mended their fishing nets, and worked the barley fields fer three weeks. Which Ubbe conveniently forgot tae mention when he was tallyin’ up his grievances.”
Isolda valued the labor against the grain and found the difference came to four sacks of barley and a barrel of salted herring. A pittance from the castle stores, but to Dunmore it closed the ledger, and to Creagach it proved their work hadn’t been forgotten.
“And the next time ye have a dispute,” she added, rising from the bench and brushing dust from her skirts, “ye bring it tae me before ye spend the mornin’ screamin’ at each other in front of yer bairns.”
Both elders nodded with the chastened look of people who’d been so thoroughly managed they couldn’t quite pinpoint when it had happened.
Rolf walked her to the horses afterward, his weathered face carrying something that looked suspiciously like approval. “That was well handled, thank ye, me lady.”
“Is that a compliment I hear comin’ from yer lips, Rolf?”
“‘Tis an observation.” But the corner of his mouth twitched.
By the time Isolda returned to the keep, the afternoon light had turned the castle stone amber and the courtyard hummed with the familiar rhythms of day’s end. She found Ragnar in the solar, still bent over his maps, and dropped the ledger on the table in front of him.
“Four sacks of barley and a barrel of herrin’,” she said. “From the castle stores.”
He listened as she laid it out––the numbers, the labor, the resolution. When she finished, he leaned back and studied her with those steady blue eyes that still made her pulse skip when they held her too long.
“I would have done the same,” he said quietly.
The words settled into her chest like something warm finding its place by the hearth. Not praise exactly—something better. Recognition. The quiet acknowledgment that she wasn’t being humored or permitted to play at leadership while the real decisions happened behind closed doors.
She was being trusted. With his people. With their grievances and their fear and their fragile, hard-won peace.
“There’s the coastal trade in three days,” Ragnar said, pulling her attention to the map.
His finger traced the southern coastline to the narrow point where the shipping lane threaded between Uist and the mainland.
“After that, nay foreign ships should be near our waters. And I’m hopin’ Douglas has the sense tae let the season pass quietly. ”
She studied the map, her brow creasing. “Ye dinnae believe that, though.”
He never daes. That’s what keeps us alive.
“Nay,” he admitted. “I dinnae.”
Before she could respond, Freyr’s frame filled the doorway, sword belt already buckled. “Come spar wi’ me. Ye’ve been starin’ at maps long enough tae go cross-eyed.”
Ragnar glanced at Isolda. She shooed him with one hand. “Aye, let’s go. I’ll nae have ye broodin’ over parchment all evenin’.”
The training yard blazed gold in the late afternoon sun. Isolda settled onto the stone bench beside Liv, who was already threading a needle with the practiced calm of a woman who’d stitched these two men back together more times than anyone cared to count.
“Ten silver says Freyr eats dirt within’ the first two minutes,” Liv murmured.
“That’s a poor wager, considerin’ ye always win.”
“Aye, but it never gets old.”
Below them, Ragnar stripped his tunic and rolled his shoulders.
The new braid she’d woven that morning still held, the leather cord tight against the nape of his neck, and the sight of it—her mark on him, visible and deliberate—sent a flush of possessive warmth through her that she didn’t bother suppressing anymore.
He was broader than Freyr, heavier through the chest and shoulders, but he moved with the kind of economy that came from decades of muscle memory.
Every motion stripped to its essential function.
No wasted energy, no flourish. Where Freyr was quick and clever, circling and feinting, Ragnar simply waited—absorbing the rhythm of the attack until he found the gap.
And when he found it, he struck with a speed that seemed impossible for a man his size.
Their blades met with a crack that echoed off the courtyard walls.
Freyr pressed forward with a flurry of strikes––fast, testing, designed to probe rather than damage.
Ragnar turned each one aside with his blade angled just enough to redirect rather than absorb, conserving strength while Freyr burned through his.
He fights the way he leads. Patient. Controlled. Lettin’ the other man commit first.
“Ye’re holdin’ back!” Freyr barked, circling left.
“I’m waitin’ fer ye tae give me a reason nae tae.” Ragnar’s voice carried the flat certainty of a man who’d already read the ending of this particular story.
Freyr lunged. Ragnar stepped inside the arc of the blow, caught Freyr’s sword arm at the wrist, and used his own weight to pivot his friend off-balance. Freyr stumbled two steps before recovering, his grin wide despite the dirt on his knees.
“That’s more like it.”
“He’s been too quiet, Ragnar.”
The rhythm of the spar didn’t change. Their blades met, parted, met again.
“I ken.” Ragnar turned a cut, stepped back.
“A month wi’ naethin’?” Freyr pressed forward, his voice threaded beneath the clash of steel. “Nae a raid, nae a scout, nae even a whisper from the mainland? Douglas daesnae have the patience fer this. Which means he’s nae waitin’—he’s ready.”
“Aye.” Ragnar caught the next blow on the flat of his blade and shoved Freyr back three steps. “And we’ll be ready fer him.”
Freyr recovered, circled again. “Ye should move her inland. Temporarily. Send her tae Erik on Skye until—”
“Nay.”
“Ragnar—”
“I said nay.” The word came out quiet, but something shifted in his stance—heavier, more final, like a gate dropping into place. “Isolatin’ her draws attention. And it would anger her.”
“Better angry than—”
“She stays wi’ me, Freyr.” Ragnar met his friend’s eyes over their crossed blades. “Where I can protect her. That’s the end of it.”
Isolda’s fingers had gone white against the stone bench.
He wants tae send me away.
She hadn’t meant to hear. The wind had shifted, carrying their voices up to the walkway and now the words sat inside her chest like shards of something broken.
Freyr thinks I’m a liability. A target tae be moved and hidden like valuables before a siege.
But beneath the flash of anger, beneath the old familiar sting of being treated as a piece on someone else’s board, another truth surfaced—quieter, harder to dismiss.
Ragnar had refused. Not because she was useful or because sending her away was impractical, but because he wouldn’t do that to her.
Because he knew her well enough to understand what exile would mean—that it would undo every fragile thing they’d built, every thread of trust she’d woven into that place and those people and the man who sat still for her braids and thanked her for her work.
Beside her, Liv set down her needle. “Ye’ve gone pale, me lady. Everythin’ all right?”
Isolda watched the two men below break apart, Freyr clapping Ragnar’s shoulder, both of them breathing hard and glistening with sweat in the fading light.
“Aye.” She unclenched her fingers from the bench. “Everythin’s fine.”